Nihon Falcom thread, "who cares about more Trails when we have Ys" edition

I just noticed this video is the OP and isn't just a pic. Don't mind my retardation.

Maximum discardment

I didn't notice this

Any translators here? Anything relevant?

Jesus OP, how old are you? "unknown to the west until recently"? I played my first Ys game on my cousins Sega Master System in 89, then bought a TG-16 CD rom in 91 where I soon after bought Ys book 1+2 *and* Ys 3 for it.

Ys 3 was also out for the SNES and Genesis as well.

Plus there was all that Nightwolve faggotry over the patches ten years ago where we all pirated the PC version of Felghana and played it translated.

I would go back and try again.

Yes, we get it, Falcom was never niche as fuck and the West perfectly remembers and loves their first RPG games.

Well, well, look who was actually a father of a 10 year old kid and never said anything…

Which means he fucked at the age of 11.

Went and archived the most comprehensive set of end-game credits in Falcom games online: web.archive.org/web/20160510002730/http://www.blogbus.com/falcombob-logs/190011148.html

Throw any of these pages into Google Translator and have fun. I'm surprised President Kato had to direct games like LoH V: Cagesong of the Ocean (previous ones were led by Shinji Yamazaki, in lieu of proper Director(s)), but maybe that's because Tadashi Hayakawa and Daisuke Fujii both left around 1999 after directing many Falcom games in the later-'90s.

Many Falcom fans in Japan probably don't know the name Panorama Toh, let alone Escape from Twilight Zone or Asteka II (newer example would be RINNE). Granted, I think OP's being hyperbolic, implying people scanning the thread don't know Ys, Kiseki, older Legend of Heroes series, Brandish, and (Legend of) Xanadu by now.

lol, Is that from the latest Dengeki/Famitsu feature? Not like Adol's the only red-head fathering children in that world.

Also, Ys II Special's up on Falcom Music Channel now (you can download a gamerip from VGMrips, too), embed related

can someone explain?

MIDI version of Gadobadorrer's pretty cool.

Dela Delon chases you into dead ends throughout Brandish (The Dark Revenant), but falls into traps herself, hinting at what to avoid. Fortress is the name of the final dungeon in each of the first three Brandish games.

Just got a PSP and realized that there are a lot of Falcom games on it, whee should i start? I was thinking Gurumin perhaps.

Gurumin's a great choice (music embed related), just make sure you have a way to play with a pad as the game's camera wasn't too well-designed back in 2004 on PC. The PC release is better but framerate's the same on all versions (Japanese Windows release included), so get the PSP version for convenience/stocking your library.

Aside from that, Ys Seven is the obvious choice until someone hacks the Chinese PC version with an English patch + DRM removal. Please consider getting Brandish: The Dark Revenant, too, if you want a classic dungeon-crawling experience remade for accessibility (and with better boss designs). None of these games are among Falcom's most challenging. Ys: Oath in Felghana can easily be one of their hardest games on Hard/Nightmare/Inferno, and the PSP version has features unique to it which haven't been pushed into the Steam/GOG release.

I second Brandish. Really great game.

Is there more exclusive to the PSP version than the voice acting and special burst mode or whatever? I think I heard about some mod that adds in the voices to the PC version anyway.

You can switch between the newly arranged music and the Sharp X68000 soundtrack used for Wanderers from Ys: vgmrips.net/packs/pack/ys-iii-wanderers-from-ys-sharp-x68000

Sadly you can't hear the vocal version of Morning of Departure in any of these releases.

I gave jdkluv the GS MIDI soundtrack from Ys Eternal (embed related), which you can have too: mega.nz/#F!8kxjFajD!jrlmgv7vzPpFeMoipRJ_Lw

Several great versions in this playlist, some referencing Perfect Collection Ys too. The SC-88 MIDI soundtrack's been up on another channel for a while, so these recordings are new and exclusive to Falcom Music Channel.

Cool

Mr. "give me literal translations and I'll reinterpret the texts avoiding XSEED terms" announced his bastardized fan-translation of Zero to be released next December

heroesoflegend.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=21&p=2248

Some of this mysterious music from Ao no Kiseki is giving me the chills. Also fits if we're talking about the ZnK PSP fan patch, lol.

The Evo version isn't as ominous yet relaxed.

Not just that, he's made the translators go through and translate as they play, rather than playing both Zero and Ao before properly translating and editing Zero. And now he's asking for a consultant on the project, the same role he never offered to someone like Floofy and which neither she nor Guan would accept now that Zeromonkey's a revealed doofus.

np

Who the fuck is this retard, exactly? Why is he working on this game if he doesn't know anything about it, or any game for that matter? The last thing we want is some attention whore to ruin the already not that high reputation of the series with some shitty-ass hack job. If it does turn out that way I'll be fucking mad.

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JUST

Pretty sure the PSP version of FC and SC used the same thing, even with XSEEDs translation.

Amiami only exclusive
amiami.com/top/detail/detail?gcode=GAME-0016171&page=top

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Renne is already a slut

I hope you die soon

Towa a best.

Speaking of which, I picked Emma on NG because Towa wasn't available and Towa on NG+. When I carry over my data who will it remember in CS II?

what ami suppose to see here?

Alright, it's time to play Dawn of Ys. This dub's pretty good so far and Romuns still got the funky. Lemnos's legs still weren't as annoying as how little you could see in the mine.

Not much way around that because Falcom never bothered to replace them with English quote brackets when inserting XSEED's scripts.

I don't know what's causing it but sometimes when I start Zwei II it runs at a single digit framerate no matter what options I change. Restarting my computer did the trick but I'd like to figure out the cause since I don't want to have to restart every time this happens. I tried closing various programs and nothing changed with any of them.

I remember hearing people talk some shit about the dub but it sounds better than some of the games that were dubbed back in the 90s. Wasn't the Ys 3 dub in the Turbografx fucking abysmal?

Every Falcom game dubbed in English back then, save Ys I & II of course, got shafted with poor voice direction and budget. Legend of Heroes's dub is so bad it's good, while Ys III's stuck in the uncanny valley.

Also, you don't get even partial EXP when Karna beats an enemy for you in this game. That's annoying, it disrupts the flow and makes me waste health going after demons. Dawn of Ys's difficulty curve is weird because of things like this. Still quite good.

First footage of Ys VIII. Framedrops are pretty bad, and Okaji likely arranged the background music, but it looks pretty fun.

This must be a fucking nightmare on the Vita since this looks to be the PS4 version. No wonder they haven't shown us much gameplay.

The PS4 port better run at 60 FPS.

I hope it gets a PC port somehow.

First extended footage, rather.

Looks good, but I hope it's the PS4 version since they've made time for optimizing FPS, among other things. The Vita version's probably not gonna release unscathed if Kondo's right about Falcom dealing with development issues often these days. Music sounds cool, definitely feels like Okajima arranged the track.

Since I'm at the Lava Zone in Dawn of Ys, it's time for Lava Zone.

Finally got back to TitS: SC after a long break. I was stuck at boss in Axis Pillar entrance (solid seekers + Riot Arm, skippable but that would leave bad taste) due to insufficient damage with cpt. Schwartz and Kurt (hard difficulty). Luckily got through it with my "main" setup Olivier + Kloe. Inside Axis Pillar is much easier.

Is XSEED planning Kiseki 3rd TL?

3rd is due to release on Steam/GOG in Spring 2017, was announced back in March this year, translated mainly by the Trails of Cold Steel freelancer with editing by Trails in the Sky people.

Finally. Shit I want this game. I don't like fishing, really, but this was cute.

tokyo xanadu when?

I've come to like fishing minigames. They're kind of relaxing.

September 30th 2015

you cheeky cunt

Fuck Trails and Ys and all that other new-fangled nonsense.
They need to remake the early DraSle games - particularly Sorcerian, Legacy of the Wizard and Faxanadu.

Second boss of Dawn of Ys is damn fun, though axe hitbox is just a bit too large to consistently dodge. Taking hits half the time you charge in for an attack makes this one an arms race. You might say it was A Great Ordeal, but not quite.

Kondo at least wants to remake Sorcerian: please use archive.is/articles/2016-02-14-falcom-vs-the-fans

Whoa, when did Eurogamer make the blacklist here. I archived it before giving them hits the day they put the article up, though: archive.is/VGbzg

Faxanadu is not a Falcom game and may or may not fit into the Dragon Slayer franchise as is.

As for older Falcom games deserving remakes, Star Trader's high on my list. Plenty of story for Kiseki fans, and the developers could try a genre (either doing horizontal arcade shooter, again, or maybe an action space-sim) and challenge themselves. One catch: it must be fully '80s-styled, and not in a superficial retro sense. EVE Burst Error's upcoming remake's keeping the original character designs, just redrawn for higher resolutions, and I'd like for Falcom to do the same with a new Star Trader, like how they treated Dinosaur's artwork.

Popful Mail, Sorcerian, Drasle Family, maybe even Romancia have premises worth revisiting. Kusano should direct these remakes, or maybe him and Ishikawa like with Dinosaur Resurrection.

I'll keep saying again and again that Falcom should release "Kyoto Sorcerian", in which you control a clan filled with ninjas, samurais and shit though different generations and the amount of customization is huge as fuck. That would be a great way to revive Sorcerian.

Also we need a spiritual sequel to Gurumin and a new Vantage Master or Lord Monarch that doesn't suck, but console gamers have no interest on those genres so…

Somehow a few tracks from Sorcerian Online got an album release, embed related.

They could remake Sengoku Sorcerian with what you've described, plus VM Japan's characters and environments/summons. But a new Sorcerian, with Falcom alternating releases of new scenarios + remakes of the old ones, would take a lot of effort to match Western competitors these days. Adapting the squad combat from recent Ys into Sorcerian's party system would be a start. I wonder if Kondo's playing a long con by upping the company's production values enough to do a Sorcerian Next.

But there's still a sequel hook, you don't need a spiritual sequel to what's already a spiritual sequel to Zwei!!. Whoever cursed Tokaron is likely to mess up the Monster and Human worlds again.

New Vantage Master and/or Monarch games would be rad, and very marketable if better online play/session options are offered. Falcom could do a sci-fi VM with a mix of alien tech, mecha, transcendentalism, and other fantasy/hard sci-fi concepts in the form of Masters/Natials/maps/skills. There's a lot more to be done with Monarch Monarch's premise on PC and/or tablet/mobile, too.

Gurumin happens in the same world of Zwei?

Same developers, different world. Nayuta and Tokyo Xanadu arguably count as spiritual successors.

Far as I can remember, Eurogamer's been on the blacklist because they promoted the whole "Gamers are dead" thing.

Makes sense. I must have posted the archive.is version last time I needed to reference it here, because I don't recall being surprised by EG getting blocked.

Does anyone what's the framerate of Celceta on PC? Is it capped to 60? It looks so good I feel it's above 60.

I found Gwyneth Paltrow's daughter.

Seriously though, I love the funny names Falcom gives some of their NPCs. I'm having a hard time remembering most of them, though. The only one I can think of is a fairy named Milf in Zwei!!.

Originally it was only 30fps, but the translation patch doubles the framerate.
There are a few bugs introduced by this, that will be fixed in the final version.

I'm supposed to face her with Tita in party? Luciola was annoying enough with Schera, can't even think what trouble Tita brings :P

I feel like I'm playing Felghana wrong. I'm not enjoying this at all after the very first boss fight and I'm up to that one cunt in the ice cave who literally two shots me no matter how many levels I've bothered to grind.

You skipped the red gem.

No man not the demon chick with the horizontal/vertical discs, I mean the griffon type boss that keeps bringing down icicles from the sky and you have to use the charge move on its knees to knock it down and have a small window of attack.

You are playing it wrong somehow, check some battles on youtube.

Wait, forget it, you skipped some equipment.

Are chain crafts supposed to be of any use? Normal attacks basically do 0 to almost every enemy

i liked the couple that went on vacation and the wife just went on a shopping spree while the husband was praying in the church

That boss is such bullshit, that I got stuck on it for a few days. I really don't have any advice for it. Just keep stabbing at until you kill it. Once you get past him the game is a lot easier.

You're encouraged to use buffs and debuffs in this game for normal attacks to do anything, but overall it's better to just use arts in early game until you get physical orientated characters.
Chain crafts are really useless early on too, but once you get Chain 3, it becomes really overpowered and you can potentially deal 12000 damage by end game, when even you're most powerful S-crafts will deal 6000.

Same. I can remember NPC's like Seagaro, Edel, Paterson, Anton, and Ricky, but I can't remember anyone else by name.

damn, zodiac changes everything

Phantom Pain, and Petrosphere and also great. The former massively reduces damage certain bosses can do, while the latter can slow certain bosses to crawl and have them waste several turns trying to get to you.
If you used Petrosphere on a boss and give Josette a bunch of high movement equipment, you can just have her spam Stampe and push back enemies from a safe distance so they can never get to you.

ok apparently buffs only work against normal mobs. with saint and speed ex. true double strike hits 1 to pater mater (str,def,spd up) with 88 joshua. Guess its time to switch back to good old estelle-as-earth-wall, joshua abyss fall spam kloe heal trio which worked so far.

or do forte / saint stack?

Certain bosses are immune to debuffs, like the Pater Mater and co, but the boss right after isn't, so you could go crazy with debuffs with him. Kloe's Kamfer crafts is going to help you a lot on the next boss. Also, Orbal Down debuffs enemy arts defense, so that's really helpful if you're spamming arts.

If true duel strike is only doing 1, then try equipping Joshua with the Ruby quartz and remove any Defense quartz off of him. Also, try changing his equipment to increase his Str stat. It could also just be that the Pater Mater has stupidly high defense.

Buffs/debuffs do not stack in this game. If you apply a new buff/debuff on someone, then it will be replaced by the new one.

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So guys, are you ready for Trails of Cold Steel 2?

Ys II Eternal SC-88Pro music's up on Falcom Music Channel: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzFTGYa_evXjAYHWLGlc3QPvZMoYYuKuS

Gildias is one of the better-designed fights in Felghana. There's a way to dodge his snatch attack every time while avoiding shockwaves and icicle waves. He can be exhausting to fight on Nightmare/Inferno, so it's best to practice him in Time Attack unless you're doing your first run on the highest difficulty.

TDR's nice, but it's still lower scale/budget than remakes the size of Felghana and Celceta. Brandish could definitely move into full 3D, with detailed layouts to explore as well, if Falcom put that on their agenda, rather than dolling up the original games.

2 Renewal and 4 should be available in a year or so, assuming Guan and company keep finding time to work on them.

I'd like to see a new Brandish on PC where the community can build their own dungeons like Legend of Grimrock or something. Then as long as anyone still cared we'd have unlimited Brandish.

I would be, but due to overly complicated reasons, I have to replay the game without a NG+. I'm picking canon girl Crow on this run for CS II save carry over.

That's the thing. He's incredibly bullshit on Nightmare. Even if I managed to avoid his snatch attack, the constant shockwaves and icicle waves when his HP was below 1000, were impossible to dodge.

One of the best arranges/remixes/whatever of a great song I already liked from the start.

Also I found the original track… strange. It's a very relaxing song, and somehow it fits with an Ys game. How?

Falcom monetized fanmade Sorcerian content back in the day with Selected Sorcerian contests run by a Japanese PC gaming mag. But yeah, a Brandish mapping tool that lets you both export and save custom map data, with scenario clear conditions and other triggers/events, would be awesome. Having an option for VT-/4-style maps would be important too.

Worst I can say is it took about 20 tries before I had a good run on Gildias, but that's not out of the blue for mid-2000s Ys bosses which are about solving each phase/combat pattern and then repeating the puzzle for execution's sake. I figured out how to do what you've described as impossible—wasn't easy, but more often than not I had enough air control to dodge snatches and evade waves.

Water Prison feels less predictable and martial than Tower of the Shadow of Death remixed in Ys Origin, and still has driving rhythm underneath. It's probably the best water-area theme in a Falcom game I can think of.

WOODSOFT's awesome. Chiisana Takarabako still holds up because of stuff like this version of Exodus from Brandish 3.

Is it true that 4 is completely separate from the rest of the games? Could I play it without having played 2 and 3?

I don't know if it's set in a separate world, but the characters are completely new and come from places very distant from Brandish 1/2/3's locations. Right now it's a standalone game with no connections to the others. The game's not too different aside from its isometric perspective letting you see more of the map at a given time, which lets you play a little more loose.

Ok so i finished Gurumin. What now? Do i jump straight to Brandish?.

Play all Ys games and Trails FC, SC and CS.
There's Popful Mail and Brandish.
Then wait for the official release of Xanadu Next and Tokyo Xanadu, then fantranslations for Zwei!!, Zwei II, Dinosaur Resurrection, Kaze no Densetsu Xanadu I & II.

I know all bosses have a certain pattern to them, but I could never figure out what it was for that boss fight.
By the way, were playing on the PSP or the PC, because from what I've seen on youtube. The boss is less bullshit on the PSP then on the PC

Yes, play Brandish.

*were you play on the PSP

Okay, I've had it happen three times now. Looking through my processes before and after there doesn't seem to be anything that affects it. So far restarting my computer fixes it 100% of the time but I don't know quite for how long. All I know is that the next morning when I open it to check then it happens again so something happens in that 12 hours or so of uptime.

Any ideas what the issue could be?

Tita + Olivier just didn't work, switched to Kloe + Kevin and it feels cheating now. Reason for tita was extra story lines but no can do.

I used Kevin + Tita when I fought Pater and just gave Estelle all the Arts boosting equipment for that fight. Too bad the extra lines from that fight were "Hi Tita! Bye Tita!"

Also, a litttle bit of advice for the next fight. Instead of having everyone together and using Earth Wall. Try separating everyone and using Gaia Shield Instead of earth wall. That way when someone uses an AoE attack on you, it only hits one person instead of everyone. If you got the Time Quartz in Chapter 8, then equip that on you're Gaia Shield spammer.

Before first turn.

splitting to two groups was the way to go in prologue loewe fight, likely here too

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Yeah… whatever. Nightwolve's salt is deserved since he was the one that made the tools used in the decompression/packing. Without his tools the English patch wouldn't exist. Plus, Wydwyrd or however the fuck you spell that faggots name literally stole the community's work and sold it to XSEED claiming 100% credit / profit.

Fuck XSEED and community thieves.

Hi Nightwolve. Reminder that they only needed the English translation for the PSP port and you didn't need a PC programmer for a PSP port that Falcom themselves would work on.

A) I'm not Nightwolve
B) That doesn't dismiss Wydwyrd stealing from the community
C) Fuck XSEED

Altus has done far better for us, thankfully.

Yeah, no. Fuck you nightwolve, they didn't need you AT ALL and the translation was bought legally.

Ok go write some tools that allows the community to create a fan translation patch, and have your "partner" steal it from the entire community and take sole credit.

Prove it. I've read through both sides of the story and Wydwyrd's version is literally "yeah I did it, so what, LOL XD!!1!!".

Altus > XSEED you normalfag faggot.

You don't get it, or rather, you are fucking stupid.

You need to know Japanese to translate text. That's all they needed, a translation, not tools or programming. You get the translated text and falcom put it on the PSP port.

Now tell where you, nightwolve, fits into the PSP release. Please do. Hint: you don't need him.

If you want to side with a faggot autist that refuses to move on and keeps writing wall of texts and trying to destroy a company because it hurt your feelings, ok, nightwolve, do as you please. But thatd oesn't make you right.

No Wydtyrd you don't get it. Probably because you're a NEET faggot that has never developed anything or been a part of a community project (let alone one where someone steals all the work and takes all the credit / profit).

Wydtyrd quit lying. We know what you did because you literally admitted it in the Seldane forums.

kek

Go back to your retarded website and keep crying. The world doesn't need you, and neither Ys fans do.

Wow, I didn't expect to one-shot the boss in Torie's Tomb, which, aside from being easier than the last (and me getting lucky), is fun and trippy.

There's still too much circumstantial finger-pointing to know the whole truth. I think it's best to move on and ensure nothing like this controversy happens again, which is what both XSEED's doing anyway.

Even the Heroes of Legend people (Zeromonkey, SkyeWelse, Xalphenos, Tancients, bunch of folks involved with Ys fandom since last decade) have varying opinions on what happened. Some distrust XSEED but NW also, others side with XSEED or with NW. I don't want to give a shit, I just want this destructive Internet fight to end and both sides to take precautions, which XSEED's doing by not using fan translations.

Here's your (You).

Ok "Drop a Deuce". You're literally trying to shill that XSEED didn't buy the stolen PC version of Felghana's translation?

It's not like a 30 sec google search provides massive details about this.

kek

There is delay before you can see and move mouse at the beginning of battle, failed to do it in time that time.

Let's be honest, NightWolve is crazy, but he did deserve some credit for the work he did on the translation projects. And XSEED went out of their way to not use any of his work, which… wasn't very nice to put it lightly. NW edited Deuce's original scripts for their Falcom projects (Complete, Felghana, Napishtim and The Dawn of Ys), and he also built the Translation Station software that Deuce used, which also had an in-built WWWJDIC dictionary to speed up the translation progress.

But then again. it was a really stupid idea to get the unedited script when it were full of errors and guesslations. There was no good reason to use Deuce's translations – I very much doubt Deuce could pass a JLPT4-type test without relying on WWWJDIC, and the whole deal with the XSEED releases felt like Wyrdwad (who was the one who suggested XSEED to use Deuce's translations) and Deuce just wanted to get back at NightWolve for personal reasons.

For the first time in 3 months (or maybe even more) Xanadu Next got updated on the Steam DB.

It's not a game that should require a lot of time and complications to be released, so maybe it will get released next month?

You can also use the number keys to activate S-Crafts at the very beginning of battle.

What makes you say that? XN came out around the same time TitS FC did, so I wouldn't be surprised if that game suffered similar issues during QA.

Someone hold me.
Atleast we got Ark of Napishtim

what the fuck did i miss? TL;DR version?

Your point? Fan translators were able to add widescreen, higher resolutions and a translation to the game. So?

The widescreen feature found in XSEED's releases is far superior to those fan patches, and not for the convenience alone. They don't have the same stretching issues that I remember the fan patches having. On top of that, the Steam releases also have new pillar graphics for certain screens (titles, shops, maps, etc.) for an extra touch, so you don't get black borders or stretched images when playing in widescreen resolutions.

Only Xanadu Next has that, and I'm sure XSEED will be able to implement something better.

lol, Everyone knows I/II and pre-Celceta IV are classic-style Ys. I just beat Dawn of Ys, doesn't get more classic than something like that. The series has been around for almost 30 years, it was bound to change.

In the Fires of Ignition > Final Decisive Battle, just for the melody.

The fanmade widescreen patch for XaNext stretches the image rather than rendering more on-screen, so that's something I think Sara can and must fix to improve the game (though I like using the widescreen patch still). Upgraded menu/UI graphics are essential, much like what Trails FC/SC got and which 3rd soon will.

Other potential improvements—

•Simple time attack (won't have online leaderboards most likely, but would let you do a boss rush based on your playthrough + balancing for the fights)
•Calibrating the enlarged mini-map for all resolutions/aspect ratios, mainly those higher than what Falcom provided
•Fixing bugs like the Master Goblin's Rolling Blaze skill fucking your shit up, only for some players
•More useful History log, letting you output it to a text file with info on areas entered, stats increased, &c.

Why does everyone seems to hate Ys III, it's like a better Zeda II i like it.

Because compared to I and II, it's a disappointment. Then westerns didn't try any of the IV titles or V and the 3D games are great, so that must be the black sheep of the series.

Which is wrong, because the real black sheep is Ys V. But most people haven't played that one, so it doesn't count. At least Ys III feels like an Ys game.

The original for PC-88 was pretty good for its time. People usually refer to subpar console ports of Wanderers from Ys.

After dealing with performance drops in Zwei II for a bit I finally decided to fiddle with the options and single out the cause. For whatever reason, the only option that affects the framerate on my computer is the texture resolution. Every other option can be maxed but if I don't have the texture resolution set to 縮小(1/2) then the framerate just tanks in town and most areas in dungeons.

It's a shame cause the full res textures look pretty nice. The difference is very apparent on the lamp post, stairs, and panda in these screenshots. Also, I'm not sure if those shadows look like that because of the change in texture resolution or if I caught them at a weird time but they look a fair bit worse. I'd much rather have a stable framerate though since it plays a lot better and it's easier to look at in motion.

Xanadu Next localization when

God damn it, is Holla Forums doing that thing where it doesn't actually update the thread unless I post?

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does trails of cold steel work with RPCS3 yet? or is there PC version

It's very slow and only the gui works. Everything 3D just stays black.

Man, that opening theme is a lot different than openings for the other Ys games. The rest of the music is as I would have expected. I like it all and I can't wait to hear more.

I'm so tempted to get the Vita version but I know it'd be a better idea to just wait for the PS4 version. The game looks so good.

Jesus fuck TiTS:SC is long. I'm forty or so hours in and it seems like at least a dozen are left.

Really clogging my backlog.

New music sounds good. Least favorite track (based on the sample) is Smash Up! because of its wimpy bass drums. But did you guys skip to the end and see that ice environment? I really like the look of that, especially if it means platforming.

Apparently Monarch Monarch had tons of unused music, like this one posted to Falcom's MIDI website. The others might be in two discs sent out with copies of the game, or something along those lines, info's vague.

Sucks you have to downgrade textures to stabilize performance, but at least there's a fix I can tell others about.

When XSEED fixes their damn forums, I dunno…

SC is basically FC again + aureole

Sadly it didn't fix the single digit framerate thing that seems to happen randomly. I thought it had something to do with uptime but yesterday it worked fine for most of the day and my computer was on for longer than the last few times it happened. I'm back to not having a clue what the cause is and I'm not really sure where to go for help at this point. I'm thinking of installing it on my laptop to see if I get any problems there.

I'm at the last of the four towers and they're going rather quickly, but the next chapter is the entire damn world again again, apparently.

Falcom is niché and anyone who says otherwise is deluding themselves. The mainstream never heard of Ys.

You need to sell at least two million for IGN to notice you.

An unofficial non licensed fan TL doesn't mean shit user. Copyright goes to the party that buys the license from Falcom.

That is just the risk you run.

At this point we'll get Zero, Azure and even Cold Steel on PC before the XSEED forums work properly.

I still wonder how bad is the code. How can it give so many problems constantly? At this point it would be better to start from scratch.

Loewe is rather annoying fight. It always goes like this (hard): 30min in to the battle when you're just about to win there's suddenly 5 enemy turns in a row and guaranteed wipe. 2 Onyx Gems and all equips selected for speed it's still barely manageable with clock down and speed ex on single member (67-72 spd). All goes well until that time Zero Storm hits and you're without gaia shield..

I agree, he's kind of annoying to fight. The best thing you can do is have two people casting Death Scream, and two people casting Gaia Shield/Earth Guard, while Joshua wears the Gladiator equipment. Really boring, but it always keeps you safe no matter what. You could as use Petrosphere on Loewe and the two lions things and run away from them.

If you really want to finish the battle quickly, you could use all of your Zemra capsules and powders on Joshua and have him destroy everything. If you're just underleveled, then killing one Shining Pom in the Liber Ark Tunnels should be enough.

Dawn of Ys finished. It's really good, though flawed in ways I haven't seen mentioned elsewhere. For example, you have to move basically all the time or else an enemy might bump you into a corner and, because you don't get recoil when bumped (enemies do), you'll die in less than a second because of no invincibility frames. This bites early on when you have to do the first dungeon. Hudson designers figured tight corridors, enemies strong enough to do what I've just mentioned, and not enough FOV around Adol for navigation would be a great combo. What the fuck…

Still, it's got Yonemitsu, some of the best Ys bosses ever (definitely of its time), a lot of overworld/dungeon variety, and some puzzles for pacing. Excellent stuff.

GIFs and some pics because Holla Forums remembered my embed.

OT, but the Senran Kagura PC ports is targeting 60 FPS and 1080p resolution at least, according to XSEED today on Twitter.

Holy shit, the controller support is so much better in Zwei II than in Zwei!!. Using items in the first one with a controller was a pain because you had to press a button to bring up the cursor then fiddle with it to get down to the item bar. I still managed to get through the game but using items mid-combat was a pain. I don't know how they did it in the PSP remake cause I haven't played it but if XSEED ever brings it over I hope they improve that.

Anyways, in Zwei II you can just press a button and it pauses the action while you move your cursor along the item bar. It seems you can do the same with weapons once you get more. You can do it on M+KB too but that seems less necessary since you can very quickly move the mouse to the bar and back.

Hopefully my shit PC can handle the massive amounts of life and hometown. Did the PS4 version not run at 1080p 60FPS?

I spammed 3x powder and 1x capsule depleting all of them but managed to finally take him down. Interesting to see how final boss goes without any Zeram items. Party is 87-91

Speaking of Dawn of Ys, have a meme.

Last boss was a joke due to slow speed

falcom.com/vantage/download/VMOnline.exe

Apparently they're working on a new site with the forums integrated.

That's what I've read, but don't ask me anything detailed about SK, it's a whole 'nother world. All I know is Tamsoft's doing the PC port, which makes this encouraging news.

I wonder how many does it'll go before someone hacks it again.

The child Dogi's rescuing there is a meme. He outdoes Tarf in every way imaginable…except leveling up and killing demons.

Anyone wanna try and get a game running? I got a friend to futz with Hamachi for two hours but he couldn't join my room after all that.

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If you or anyone else could make a tutorial to play Vantage Online online I'd join. Hamachi? How does that work?

Liber Ark is pretty cool. How's Cold Steel 1? I've already got it in my Vita, but am waiting until I am done playing with TiTS.

Man, I already had my fill of high pitched pink haired fairy characters after playing Nayuta no Kiseki. Hopefully she's different enough.

Cold Steel seems pretty good so far. I'm sitting pretty at 26 hours played and I just started the Field Study for Chapter 4… since each Field Study seems to be getting longer, and there are 7 Chapters + the prologue I can already see this taking me 50-60 hours for my first playthrough, which is more or less how long it took me to finish SC if that helps give you a metric.

Is there some way to fight bosses again in Zwei II? I noticed that I got a rank and I can replay stages to get better ranks there so it would be weird if there was no way to do the same with bosses. I went back to the boss room and didn't find anything so I'm worried.

youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzFTGYa_evXj7g7IUSyMV0Li3OjMCM9Je

Looks like Xanadu Next is coming out this summer. Just wish they'd draw more attention to it.
twitter.com/RPGSite/status/733886267864154112

obligatory

I wonder if it will actually have any improvements compared to the translation combined with the widescreen patch.

*fan translation

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Aren't there quite a few big JRPGs coming out this summer? I hope it doesn't get buried under the competition.

The patch doesn't offer true widescreen (stretches the image), so implementing that would be gracious of XSEED. I posted a list of other ways you could improve the game on Marvelous Forums: forum.marvelous-usa.com/index.php?showtopic=28662

XaNext ≠ JRPG, it's a stat-heavy dungeon crawler with more resemblance to Brandish, Nox, Vagrant Story and/or Symphony of the Night/Super Metroid. I'm sure XSEED will make it stand out and get people to classify it differently.

Shit, it's been so long since I played Xanadu Next and I played so much Ys vs Sora no Kiseki that I forgot some of the songs in it weren't for that game.

To most people it seems like JRPG just means an RPG from Japan. Hell, RPG itself is a pretty broad genre to be honest.

So I just finished Ys I & II. What comes after that? Is it Oath of Felghana some other version of Ys III?

Other thing, I had Steam cloud save enabled but even when I disabled it I can't find save files. There are only bmp images (save slot thumbnails) and 1kb autosave in Steam/userdata//223810.

%USERPROFILE%/Saved Games does have Ys I/II folder but save folder is empty inside it. Save does load when I open the game. Are Ys Chronicles I & II saves inside these bmp files? Or how to backup them locally?

forgot to mention that steam cloud for this game is 15MB

timeline is origin -> 1 -> 2 -> celceta -> felghana -> kefin -> dana -> ark -> seven

Ark would be next in release order. Nobody plays kefin

just saw some post in archive.org saying .bmp is save file

thanks

Xanadu Next pics of course.

You should try either Ys VI: Ark of Napishtim, the first mid-200s Ys game preceding Felghana and Origin, or move on to Origin because it precedes and directly references I & II. Either order makes Felghana the middle game.

Weird that I & II Chronicles+ saves are stored as bitmaps.

It turns out my laptop actually has less problems and I don't know why. Maybe it's because it's running Windows 8 and not Vista? I can have the full texture resolution and it's fine. Although, the overall resolution is lower of course. I'm not sure which to play it on now.

Man, I can't wait to play Xanadu Next again. I think I've gotten better at block puzzles since I originally played it so that'll be good.

There's a guide at the third post in this thread

Ark -> Oath -> Origin -> Seven -> Celceta -> Dana

There's also the old Ys games, which… are mediocre to be honest (exception: Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys, if it had a remake it could top I or II).

They updated SC with Blueblancwhatever's new VA.

Oh shit, I didn't think they'd show up so soon. It's cool to see them in 3D now.

I spent close to 70 hours on my first run through of Cold Steel.

Enjoyed every second of it.

The PS3 version has some framerate drops in a few areas and I've seen one or two glitches but they usually happen during cutscenes.

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Why do I feel we already know these characters from previous titles but nothing comes to mind? Well, there's the knife and it's a girl so… Karna comes back?

I wish Geis could appear, but this is from before Ark, so…

I already like this guy more than the analogous character in Zwei!!. I hope you can skip the エクササイズ！bit in later playthroughs.

マッスル！マッスル～！

Fuck, I forgot I had sage on. Don't die on me!

So I was recommended Oath in Felghana and loved the fucking shit out of it. So I wanted to play another YS game and grabbed Memories of Celceta for my Vita and I'm just not feeling it. Is Memories of Celceta just a bad one or did Oath in Felghana ruin my expectations?

MoC is a good game but Oath is certainly one of the best Ys games out there. I wouldn't say playing Oath first really spoiled anything (I played it first too). The combat of Seven and MoC is a pretty different beast from the three prior games what with the party, skills, and dodging added in. Depending on how little you're feeling it I'd say pick up Ark of Napishtim and Origin and play those since they're on the same engine as Oath. Be aware that Ark was made before Oath and was the first 3D Ys game so while it is good it's still rough around the edges. Origin also has strong links to Ys I and II since it acts as a prequel for them and the overarching lore of the series.

What is it you aren't liking about Celceta?

Celceta's not bad but maybe it's not for you. Origin and Ark are the games with the same gameplay as Oath. Alternatively go back and play from the beginning like you should've in the first place. :^)

I dunno really I think it's just that Felghana was like a perfect feeling 2D game and was expecting the next game to feel something like that. Celceta just can't though for one thing it's 3D so it just cannot feel as tight. The party system is also just kind of bugging me I don't like that the other dudes can get hurt or contribute to combat. I like the different attack types being effective against different enemies though. I kind of wish you would just change the character model or something when you switch like Trine maybe.

so should I just redo the game on lower difficulty or what? There were a couple of other bosses that I also didn't enjoy, most notably the asshole fire bat that you fight after getting the dash ability

What's your difficulty setting? Always go with Normal if you're having trouble doing the higher modes and don't want to grind forever. You're past Gyalva now, take solace in that.

Felghana's definitely tighter, but they're both 3D, let's not be silly. You may or may not like Seven more, it being Celceta's predecessor—definitely has the better music. For a proper 2D Ys give I & II Chronicles+ a shot to cleanse your palate.

Anyone else try to fight bosses without healing items even when you can use them? It just kind of feels like cheating when you can just get a bunch of healing items and brute force your way through. I don't know if Zwei II has a Hard mode or anything so I see this as a good extra bit of challenge. Maybe some of the later bosses will crush my will hard enough but so far it seems quite doable.

I've been doing that since I was a kid.

Fuck you cheaters, no wonder you became leaders.

God damn it, I turned Sage off in my last post so why did it do it again?

I can't see myself doing it in RPGs like that where things tend to have elements of chance. With the majority of ARPGs though you can avoid every attack once you learn the patterns and get better.

Although, I don't use items a whole lot in RPGs as more of a "But what if I need it later?" sort of thing rather than a challenge.

Goddamn. Also fuck those items from SC which resurrect people with full CP, now that's what i call cheating.

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Source?

blog.gamekana.com/archives/8590624.html

Translation from some user from Twitter.

All this Trails milking is getting out of hand. And to think that originally they were going to skip the Crossbell arc. Goddamn Falcom.

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He's only the translator working on Brandish 4 and 2 Renewal, give the guy some credit.

I have almost no idea about who translates Falcom shit, sorry.

…also Brandish renewal versions + 4 WHEN

How bad is Light Magic in Ys II Chronicles? I don't want to sweep that stupid orb over the entire world.

Josep made these Ys III PC-88 GIFs.

Useful mainly for Rasteenie, ignore it afterward.

That's some nice scrolling on that first GIF.

How have I never played any of the sidescrolling versions of Ys III? I had considered picking up the SNES version before but I ended up not. Is the PS2 version any good?

Great, thanks for telling me that.

If I play through the remakes after this by the game they're based on (so oath in felghana>memories of celceta, etc) how bad will it be to go backwards in game mechanics?

The SNES port is one of the worst. Go Megadrive or PC-98. The PS2 remake isn't bad from what I hear, limited only by the original game.

Hotwheels why?

I often forget I own a Genesis cause the only game I own for it is Sonic 2 and I never hook it up because I only have an RF cable. Even if I played my Genisis I'd probably go with the PC98 version cause I like the look of PC98 games.

I wish my PS2 disc drive wasn't fucked so I could play burned games. If only the damn thing wasn't region locked. I'm very curious about the Taito PS2 remakes of Ys III, IV, and V. Even though the latter two apparently aren't great I'd still like to play them

Are there any guides out there for Ys II Special? It seems interesting but I don't know Korean. It's a shame this version never got even a Japanese release.

Time for me to do Falcom's PSP games. Gonna start with Ys Seven + Brandish: The Dark Revenant (simultaneously because I beat Brandish Renewal already), then Nayuta. PPSSPP is playing ball with my system, so I've got 2x resolution with V-sync and other stuff enabled.

I recommend playing Ys VI before Felghana and/or Celceta (or Ys Seven) since that game, though important for reviving the series, is unrefined vs. its sequels. A Normal Catastrophe playthrough should be as quick as the other games, but pay attention because there's more missables and NPCs will imply you need a special item or two, tucked away somewhere on Canaan, just to proceed.

Wanderers from Ys is worth playing from a historical viewpoint, just as the earlier Ys IV games (and, likely soon, Ys V) are.

Spiderman is also a Trails fan

The Crossbell arc seems like it is the most interesting, but that may just be the grass being greener.

New trailer! Not the demo movie, but shows some new stuff.

Brandish actually looks pretty dang good upscaled like that. Did Joyoland or whoever make a PC port of it ever?

Could you imagine how big a screen like this would be in Trails? Just how many NPCs are there in FC alone?

There wasn't anything in the Embeded field, what the hell?

Up to Ancient Tree in Ys Seven and Ruins 6 in Brandish TDR. The map of Vittoria sounds Borgesian, a way to punish adventurers with ultimate despair should they seek the Tower and beyond.

They didn't. But it looks surprisingly good in emulation.

Now you know how I feel, lol. That NPC chart is amazing, as are most of Falcom's lists/bestiaries.

Lot of talent on Nico Nico Douga going underappreciate